"I would! For if the flesh of me and soul

Are fibred with the ages,

My triumph is of them and manifold

Of all life's mystic stages."

So, forth they came—a vast ancestral line,

Upon my vision teeming,

All shapes whose natal semblance could affine

Them to me, faintly gleaming.

[Pg 50]

I knew them as I knew myself, and felt

The Day of each within me;

And so began to speak, the while they dwelt

About—they who had been me.

"My Sires," I said, "think you I have forgot

The fervor of your living?

How into me is moulded all you thought.

Of getting or of giving?

"Think you I do not feel my every drop

Of blood is as an ocean

In which are surging and will never stop

 Prev. P 43/113 next